


Your Hands Protect The Flames

by ratsauce



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: F/M, Genderswap, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Prompt Fill, don't know how that got there, feminist!Niall, girl!Niall, sexist!Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 10:47:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4016854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratsauce/pseuds/ratsauce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Prompt:</b><br/>Extreme feminist girl Niall, who is known for her campaigns and strike that she organizes all around and is absolutely terrifying even with her soft and sweet innocent look. Everybody believes that either the girl is lesbian or she hates all men just by the strength of her speech and her outlook on ‘some’ men-which people turns into ‘all’ men....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Hands Protect The Flames

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notsoperfect](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsoperfect/gifts).



> Work title from [Icarus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVgeTLWcpxs) by BΔSTILLE.  
> "Extreme feminist girl Niall, who is known for her campaigns and strike that she organizes all around and is absolutely terrifying even with her soft and sweet innocent look. Everybody believes that either the girl is lesbian or she hates all men just by the strength of her speech and her outlook on ‘some’ men-which people turns into ‘all’ men.
> 
> But then surprising everyone there is Bad Boy harry who is dating her, this is very surprising as just months ago Harry was known to sleep around with girls and the few relationship Harry had had in the past had seemed to end due to extreme possessiveness from Harry’s part and no one believes that these two could be together. But they are, Niall first met Harry after a one night stand he had with her roommate and he was trying to sneak out and both of them had had a huge spat in the dining table and Harry had been star struck by the loud mouthed girl. Anyway fast forwards a few months and Harry is dating her and he is still a possessive asshole but only Niall can put up with him because even when he says that her dress is too short its not because he don’t want her to dress the way she liked but is because he is afraid someone better and more deserving of her would sweep her away and that is his worst nightmare, losing Niall."

Niall hears Liam before she sees him, babbling away on his phone as he enters her hotel room without knocking first. Her face lights up when he sees him, and she pushes her laptop to the side. She catches the last bit of the conversation, a quick, "tell him that I told him to piss off" before Liam hangs up, and she snickers at the bewildered look on his face.

"Can you believe," he starts, throwing himself down onto the settee, "that some fucking tit just told Perez Hilton that you're shagging him?"

Niall laughs, open and fuck-free. "I can, actually. What's astounding to me is that you still give a shite."

Liam huffs, looks up at Niall almost in awe. "I don't know how you do it, mate."

Niall shrugs and climbs back onto her bed. She googles it, naturally:  _Niall Horan's a whore says Perez Hilton._ She skips past the usual slander and finds what she's looking for.

"Oh, okay. He's short, brunette, brown eyes. Not really my type," Niall hums, scrolling through the article. Liam looks over at her, amused.

"I gather that this won't deter you from the campaign you're going to in an hour?" Liam asks. Niall gasps and looks at him like the traitor he is.

"Of course not, Lima Bean. I'm even more motivated."

***

Liam, being a good manager, gave Niall the outlines for her speech before she made it, specifically telling her not to mention the Perez Hilton thing. She did, anyway, which lights up hers and Liam's social media by the time they get in the van to head back to the hotel.

Of course, there are the people who support Niall in literally anything she does, telling her to "fuck the haters" or some other inspirational bullshit, then there are the others who just

"This one is saying that I have a hairy cunt. How on Earth would he know that?" Niall asks, scrolling idly through her mentions.

She doesn't get a response, and when she looks up, she finds Liam glaring at her. She knows what she did but she still pretends to be scandalised. 

"Don't even, Horan." Liam says, and wow is he pissed. Niall's hardly affected. "You knew not to. I told you not to and you d-"

"You asked me not to."

"I  _asked_  you not to go and stand in front of two thousand people and mention someone who shouldn't even be worth your time, and you did."

Niall rolls her eyes. "If I'd been the one to go and say shit about fucking George Clooney, and  _he_  went and said something, he wouldn't get shit for it."

"That isn't what this is about and you know it. You know that I'm just as much of a feminist as you are, mate, which is why I'm saying this to you. Don't fall bait to bullshit."

Liam ends his little tirade with a huff. "Are ya done now?" Niall asks. 

Liam looks up at her and sighs. "Ni, I want you to be safe about all this. You're smart, you know what to do."

"I do. T'was a spur of the moment, and I'm sorry." Niall says, and for once she actually means it. She makes sure to be firm and unapologetic in anything she does, but this, she fucked up and she's willing to admit it.

"I'm gonna have to do some proper damage control, so I'm gonna get started once we get back." Liam says, pulling out his phone.

The van is quiet after that, and Niall uses the time to continue scrolling through her Twitter.

She's stifling a laugh over some overdramatic fanboy of hers when her screen goes dark, then _Hazza_ flashes across it, along with the picture of him from the London rally last year.

She answers, "Hey, lover boy."

Harry chuckles on his end of the line, voice deep and raspy like he's just woken up. It's probably morning in L.A. where he is, so it's not unlikely. 

"Hey," he says, the word followed by a yawn. "How did the campaign go?"

Niall laughs despite herself, and glances over at Liam who's scrolling through Twitter, presumably. "Um, kind of bad. I might've fucked up."

Liam looks up, then. "You did." Liam mouths to her, then shouts, "she did!" so that Harry can hear him. Niall scorns and puts the phone on speaker just in time to hear Harry ask, "What'd she do this time?"

Two shouts of, "I didn't do fuck!" and, "she went and proved how immature she is," ring through the van. Niall gives Liam that hurt look again as Harry laughs and tells- asks her, to put the phone back on handheld.

"Lemme guess," Harry starts, and Niall hears him licking his lips. "you did something that Liam asked you not to."

"I did something that I wanted to, which may or may not've been bad."

"Babe, you know, if you'd just listen to us when we tell you things, you wouldn't get yourself into shit."

And- There it is. That condescending _thing_  that Harry keeps doing. "I can handle m'self, Harry. I don't need anyone tellin' me what I can or can't do." she says. Liam looks over at her, eyebrow raised. She hears the exact moment that Harry catches himself.

"Ni, you know I didn't mean it like that-"

The van's turning into the car park and Niall doesn't want to talk to Harry anymore. "'m sorry, I can't hear ya, I think we're going through a dead zone." and she ends the call, just like that. Liam's judging her, she knows, but she's tired and Harry's an arsehole and she just can't right now.

Niall goes to bed ignoring ten missed calls and twenty-three messages from Harry.

***

Niall and her team have a few days before they leave for Scotland, and Harry was supposed to join, but he probably won't.

All her clothes are filthy because either Zayn or Lydia usually washes them for her, and they haven't, so she puts on her [Batman dress](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51PlH4WmZKL._SY445_.jpg) and goes out with Louise, the only one not pissed with her at the moment. Paps take pictures, yell horrible things at her, but Niall makes sure she looks good as she flips each of them off.

When they finally make it into a store with wifi, Niall connects as she waits for Lou to buy the makeup thingies she needs for Scotland, "the type that has moisturiser for the cold weather" apparently, Harry FaceTimes. Niall considers ignoring it, but then she kind of does want to see Harry's stupid face.

She answers, and is met with that stupid face with a huge frown on it.

"What the fuck are you wearing?" is the first thing he says to her, and Niall raises an eyebrow, completely unamused.

"Good afternoon t'you too, asshole. I'm wearing the dress Caroline gave me." 

Harry huffs, "It's short."

"How good of you to notice!" she smiles. It's fake, of course. "'s'it a problem?"

Harry groans and furrows his brows even more. "Yeah, kinda." 

Lou is back from buying whatever the hell she was buying, but Niall doesn't move from her spot. "Aren't ya even remotely tired of pissin' me off by bein' stupid?"

Harry looks hurt, but honestly. "I'm on a plane, and I'm coming to you."

"We've Scotland in a few days, I'm packing and-"

"Ni, just, _please_ , okay? Just listen to me."

Niall looks up at Louise where she's waiting patiently. "Ya said you're coming here, right? When ya get here, we'll talk."

She ends the call and stands, looping her arm in Lou's.

"Let's go."

***

It seems the men in Niall's life have a thing for being in her personal space without her permission, because when she gets back to her hotel room, she finds Harry on her bed, using her laptop.

"Oi, ya don't get to use me things when we're fighting." she says, dropping her bags on the floor near her suitcase. Harry looks a bit startled to see Niall- in her _own room_ , can you believe, and sits up, pushing the laptop to the side.

"Ni, before you blow up-"

Niall shushes him. "I'm not gonna blow up. I just want you to understand that the shit you used to keep up is not gonna work with me, yeah?"

And, well. That kinda escalated a bit quickly. They've never spoken about Harry's promiscuous past, or even acknowledged that how they met was as a result of said promiscuity.

(Niall had been washing her hair, but she had stopped when she heard a vase or something fall. What she had found was her room mate's one night stand trying to sneak out of their flat.

"Trying to sneak off, are ya?" 

He had looked up, curly hair a mess and clothes half off him as he halted in the middle of their lounge. "Yes, and you're gonna act like you never saw me."

Niall had put down the bat she had armed herself with and crossed her arms across her chest. "Oh, am I? It's twats like you that make the world a better place."

She had been so full of sarcasm, wearing only a towel, blonde hair dripping wet unto her bare shoulders.

Harry had raised an eyebrow at her. "How nice of you. I'll just go."

Him trying to leave turned into a horrible spat between them, which merged into _whatever it is_ that they have now.)

Harry doesn't say anything for a long time, just sits there watching her, face blank. She expects him to get up and leave, but what she gets is Harry's eyes welling up.

Harry hasn't ever fucking cried in front of Niall before, and however pissed off she had been, it all melts away as she rushes over to him, pulling him into a hug.

"God, Haz, 'm sorry." Niall says as Harry tries to wipe away his tears, only ending up crying more.

"You don't even fucking know how hard it is," he strains, like he's trying not to sob. Niall pulls him closer, lets him get snot all over her dress. "You don't get it that- That everyone fucking loves you and thinks you're amazing, even the haters. God you- you could get anyone you want and you're bloody stuck with me."

 And- what? "What? Harry, ya git, I love you with all my heart. I choose to be stuck with you."

Harry pulls back, face blotchy and wet with whatever. "But what happens when you don't want to deal with my shit anymore, Ni? What's gonna happen then?"

Niall's never really thought about it, honestly. Harry's not perfect, but neither is she, and she loves him with all her heart, so that's always been _it_.

"Haz, I fuckin' love you. So much. Even when ya start slippin' back into old ways," Harry flinches, but Niall continues, "I still love ya, and I always will."

"You won't," he mumbles, looking down. "You'll fall in love with someone who's just as good as you are, who won't feel like he can lose you to everyone that passes by."

Niall stops. "Is that... Is that what you've had in your head the last few months?" she asks slowly. Harry's blushing, oh my God. "Bro. I fucking _love_ you, okay? No questions asked, I just do."

Harry looks up, and Niall smiles at him. "Say it with me: Niall loves me. Come on. Niall _loves_ me."

Harry's  _still_ blushing, the little cutie. "Niall loves me," he says, and Niall grins. "I'm not saying it again."

Niall kisses him once on the nose, then again on his lips, letting it linger a bit. "You don't have to. Just believe it."

Harry hums and lets Niall pull him back into a warm hug.  

"I'm gonna tell if you're being an asshole though."

 

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't do this prompt justice and I'm sorry. Self harm/depression [blog](http://suicide-at-itsfinest.tumblr.com/), One Direction [blog](http://fuck-boyharry.tumblr.com), and NSFW [blog](http://enfantsoumis.tumblr.com/) all here if you need them.


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